


Surgeon

by Aqua_Kitty



Category: Unwind Dystology - Neal Shusterman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 03:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7343335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aqua_Kitty/pseuds/Aqua_Kitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short chapter or part that could have been in the first book, at the harvest camp. The retelling of a harvest camp surgeon who had once been an AWOL himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surgeon

Surgeon  
They always scream, as if they don’t understand that the operating rooms are soundproof, just for that reason. The boys usually try to keep quiet in the beginning, but as the unwinding goes on they get louder until they’re screaming. The girls are, more often than not, the exact opposite. They’re screaming from the moment they are set up on the table, but get quieter as if they’re realizing their demise.   
Michael hates seeing their fear; he became a harvest camp surgeon thinking that he might be able to comfort the kids just before they got unwound. What no one knows is that he used to be an AWOL unwind. He had even almost been caught on two different occasions.   
The first time he had almost been caught was the night he ran away; he was fifteen at the time. The juvie cops had come for him at 12:40 am, on Thursday, March 17th. He’ll never forget the time or date, it had been that exact moment that he realized just how much his parents cared. Luckily one of the juvies had been distracted, so Michael took the chance of kicking the other one in the shin. He ran to his best friend’s house, which proved to be a terrible idea. His parents must have told the juvies where Adam, his best friend, lived because they showed up ten minutes after Michael did. Michael had gone to either say goodbye or to convince Adam to go with him, he can’t remember which one anymore. When the juvies had found him at Adam’s, they tried to shoot Michael with a tranq gun. Adam had always been the heroic type, so he shielded Mike from the tranq gun giving Mike a chance to run. That was the last time he had seen Adam.  
The second time had been a few months after that fateful night; he had had his sixteenth birthday as an AWOL, just like the two years that had followed. Michael had been able to learn how to survive as an AWOL for the most part, except when it came to dealing with other unwinds. He had had the misfortune of running into a particularly nasty gang of unwinds whose territory Michael had unknowing walked into. They beat him up to “teach him a lesson.” Even worse was that afterwards Michael passed out before he could get back to the safe place where he had been camping out for the last few days. When he woke up a few hours later, he was inside someone’s house. The house had no furniture inside, except the small arm chair he had been sleeping on, and had no lights on. To his surprise, he saw a backpack near the front door. Whoever the homeowner was, they probably knew that Michael would try to run as soon as he got the chance, and they were right. He grabbed the bag and ran before he alerted the homeowner. He kept running until he got to the forest near the town that he had been staying in. By the time Michael stopped, it was probably mid-day based on where the sun was. Michael finally took the chance to look at the backpack he took. Inside, there was a set of fresh clothes, multiple granola bars, and two water bottles. Michael ate two of the granola bars before realizing that he should probably save them for the days that he can’t steal someone else’s food. He never noticed that the backpack was the same one he used have, before he became an unwind.  
Looking back on it, Michael knows that he probably wasn’t actually going to get caught on that second time, but he’ll never forget the fear when he thought that the homeowner could have very easily just locked the door from the outside, trapping him in, and called the cops.  
The current unwind on the operating table let out a dying whimper, snapping Michael out of his thoughts. Michael rushed to finish his part of the job, so that the kid wouldn’t have to suffer through the unwinding process for too long.   
He thought that he might be able to help the kids more if he worked for some harvest camp, but so far all it’s proved is to be torturous for Michael. With each new kid, he couldn’t help but imagine if that had been him.


End file.
